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Friday, December 30, 2016

Michael Brenner — Hypocrisy Over Alleged Russian ‘Hacking’

As Official Washington rages over alleged Russian hacking of Democratic emails, a forgotten back story is how the U.S. government pioneered the tactics of cyber-war and attacked unsuspecting countries, recalls Michael Brenner.

The bipartisan war party should spare the world its false outrage.

In the first place, nothing about the provenance of the material changes the content or impact of the news that came to light roundly discrediting Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and John Podesta. If this was a causal factor in Clinton's defeat, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. The information simply confirmed what was already out there anyway. The Democrats are in deep denial over their stupidity and seek to distract attention from their incompetence. They are losers.

Secondly, if it was actually a hack rather than a leak, it is a black eye to the US intelligence community that it cannot secure domestic information. Heads should be rolling in the agencies responsible for incompetence. Instead of blaming Russia for this, the intelligence agencies would be better advised to show how it was a leak, as some experts suspect and there is also testimony to that effect. To top it off, Podesta's email account was not actually hacked into. He fell for a phishing scheme and provided his own password like only a moron would. If the intelligence services pushed the leak narrative, for which there is plenty of evidence, they would not be looking like the fools they are now. What a bunch of dopes. Keystone cops.

Instead, Russia is being made a scapegoat to distract from US corruption and incompetence. It's not going to work, and Donald Trump is very likely to rub it in their faces.

The US political elite has lost the plot and doesn't deserve to rule. The quicker they are replaced the better — the lot of them. They should all just retire and live happily ever after on the generous pensions they have voted for themselves before they look like bigger nincompoops.

But getting back to Brenner argument that the US outrage is like the pot calling the kettle black. The US been a major employer of black ops for a long time and the first to commit cyber-aggression in planting the Stuxnet trojan horse in Iran's computer system, and then proving to the world that they were clueless by getting caught. Similarly in hacking into Angela Merkel and Dilma Rouseff's email accounts.

In all the excitement, it is easy to lose perspective. Perhaps the biggest piece of the untold story is the United States government’s pioneering role in electronic surveillance and hacking. We seem to have forgotten that the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency eavesdropped on heads of state in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, Venezuela – and, at last count, several score other capitals. Also, the United Nations Secretary General, the President of the European Union Commission, the European Central Bank and God knows whom else.

This was not coincidental. It was part of a calculated strategy approved by two successive Presidents to monitor all electronic communications around the globe. Author James Bamford and other knowledgeable experts have provided us with a detailed history of the program.

Yet, the U.S. — as presented to us by the mainstream media and most commentators reflecting Official Washington –is portrayed as the innocent among the main protagonists. The plot line represents America as the victim of unprovoked cyber aggression by the Russians and, in other circumstances, the Chinese – these attacks coming out of the blue, an aggressive blow in an assumed contest for global dominance between the powers....

Michael Brenner | Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Fellow the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS-Johns Hopkins (Washington, D.C.)

Brenner is a heavyweight by the way.

Michael Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers. Recent works on American foreign policy and the Middle East are "Fear & Dread In The Middle East", and "Democracy Promotion & Islam". He also has written "Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation" (Cambridge University Press) and "The Politics of International Monetary Reform" for the Center For International Affairs at Harvard. His work has appeared in major journals in the United States and Europe, such as Europe’s World, European Affairs, World Politics, Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy, International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, Survival, Politique Etrangere, and Internationale Politik. Directed funded research projects with colleagues at leading universities and institutes in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, including the Sorbonne, Bonn University, King’s College – London, and Universita di Firenze. Invited lecturer at major universities and institute in the United States and abroad, including Georgetown University, UCLA, the National Defense University, the State Department, Sorbonne, Ecole des Sciences Politiques, Royal Institute of International Affairs, International Institute of Strategic Studies, University of London, German Council on Foreign Relations, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and Italian Institute of International Affairs. Previous teaching and research appointments at Cornell, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Brookings Institution, University of California – San Diego, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the National Defense University.